12.13.17
Aptean, a leading global provider of mission-critical enterprise software solutions, has introduced a predictive maintenance module (PdM) into its TabWare Enterprise Asset Management system to provide manufacturers with earlier visibility into events, reducing maintenance workloads, costs and plant downtime.
By using Industry 4.0 technologies and strategies through a combination of big data and the IIoT (Industrial Internet of Things), TabWare enables manufacturers to gather more meaningful information using data from assets for analysis and subsequent predictive maintenance activities. PdM moves TabWare users from a preventive maintenance approach to a proactive condition-based approach. Benefits of PdM include:
Lower cost to repair. PdM gives manufacturers the ability to foresee and plan work with a longer lead time, leading to more efficient inventory and resource utilization.
Greater relevance of data. TabWare PdM isolates maintenance data from operational data to help manufacturers focus on critical issues.
Increased efficiency and reduced maintenance costs. Deploying PdM could reduce maintenance workloads by 25 percent, plant downtime by 70 percent and maintenance costs by one-third of what they were prior to implementation, according to statistics from several industry sources.
Taking advantage of PdM is fast and easy, and causes little to no disruption during implementation. PdM uses pre-defined common scenarios that provide out-of-the-box solutions to maintenance issues and seamlessly integrates into an existing TabWare system. Maintenance engineers now have the opportunity to take advantage of data that does more than report what has already happened.
“PdM is entirely about intelligent decisions and using data to look forward instead of backward,” said Kay Jenkins, director of the TabWare product line. “Intelligent data allows maintenance to look beyond imminent failure, to examine those conditions that are out of tolerance – abnormalities that might not be immediate cause for concern, but should be addressed sooner rather than later. With it, maintenance rises to a whole new level of effectiveness.”
How PdM works
TabWare PdM can be visualized as part of an integrated information funnel that creates meaningful data to extend the life of an asset, leading to better production as a whole.
Before introducing PdM, enterprise asset management (EAM) systems would receive alarms about events already underway. Now, as data is captured by wired and wireless sensors and stored in an historian, information is filtered through the manufacturing execution system (MES) and PdM module as it is quickly transformed into actionable intelligence.
Configuring the PdM module with the EAM system can detect early signals of maintenance failure as asset performance begins to decline, ultimately helping companies develop an accurate predictive maintenance strategy.
Using industry standard protocols, predictive maintenance functionality makes it easier to monitor the condition and operational characteristics of an asset to know when to perform service based on the wear and tear of parts, as opposed to waiting for equipment to fail altogether.
